Collins, Keenan Jones: Sharing the Priesthood of Christ

THESIS 1

All the baptized share in the dignity and responsibility of Christ’s triple ofﬁce; they are all priests, prophets/teachers, and kings/shepherds. We recalled how Romans and 1 Peter used priestly language for the Christian faithful. The priestly and kingly dignity promised to the Israelites (Exod. 19: 6; Isa. 61: 6) was extended to all the baptized (Rev. 1: 6; 5: 10). Hebrews understood Christ’s priestly self-sacriﬁce to have initiated sacriﬁces of praise and good works among his followers (Heb. 13: 15–16). We saw how Origen pictured the ideal Christian life as sharing in the high-priestly holiness of Christ. Chrysostom stressed the priestly holiness required of all the baptized. All believers should share in the priesthood of Christ through acts of virtue and the suitable interior dispositions that should accompany them, the priestly self-sacriﬁce of daily life. Augustine picked up the New Testament language about the royal priesthood of all the baptized. We could move on and cite other Christian witnesses down the centuries who appreciated how baptism conveys a share in Christ’s priestly and kingly ofﬁce. That baptism also brings a share in Christ’s prophetic ofﬁce may seem less clear. Signiﬁcantly, Seabury, at least in the passages quoted above, acknowledged the priestly and kingly dignity of all the baptized but had nothing to say about their sharing in Christ’s prophetic function. Revelation portrayed faithful Christians in royal and priestly terms (Rev. 1: 6; 2: 26, 3: 21; 5: 10; 20: 6). The author of that book was understood to exercise a prophetic gift (1: 3; 22: 7, 10, 18–19). But did Revelation also regard the whole Church as a prophetic community, one that prophetically mediated between God and the rest of humanity? The book contains at least one passage where it takes ‘prophets’ more broadly and, seemingly, as equivalent to ‘saints’, God’s ‘servants’, and those who ‘fear’ his ‘name’ (Rev. 11: 18). Paul interpreted prophecy to be the special, charismatic endowment of a select number of Christians (1 Cor. 14: 1–33; see Rom. 12: 6; Eph. 4: 11), one of the greatest gifts that he listed as second only to that of being an apostle (1 Cor. 12: 28–9). The prophets were those whose intelligible preaching built up the Church in faith by explaining the mysteries of God. A Deutero-Pauline letter presented apostles and prophets as ﬁgures of the past, foundation-stones with Christ as the corner-stone (Eph. 2: 20; see 3: 5). Luke, however, took a broader view of prophetic utterance, taking up words of the prophet Joel about all the people in Judea and applying them to the Spirit being poured out on all human beings (even if the immediate need was to explain the phenomenon of the disciples speaking in foreign tongues).

It was in universal terms that he understood the promise to have been fulﬁlled that prophecy would be revived in the ‘last days’ (Acts 2: 14–21).2

2 See J. A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 252 4.

Like Paul (1 Cor. 12: 13), Luke assumed that all Christians received the Holy Spirit (Acts 10: 44–8), and he closely linked prophecy with the reception of the Spirit. As much as anyone, Luke could be considered the scriptural patron of the belief that all the baptized share in the prophetic ofﬁce of Christ. In any case, if they share in the priestly and kingly ofﬁce of Christ, they should be expected to share in his (inseparable) prophetic ofﬁce. Add too the basic Christian conviction, expressed vividly by Paul and John, that faith and baptism entail being incorporated in Christ and becoming living members of his Body that is the Church. Precisely because they participate so intimately in his life, the faithful participate in his priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions. Many Christian communities express this sharing of all the faithful in the threefold ofﬁce of Christ through anointing them at baptism and conﬁrmation, and using prayers that articulate their new dignity and responsibility as priests, prophets, and kings/shepherds.